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Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

feld.com

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Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#61

Post by danielweber »

knappe wrote: post #46
ihsw wrote: post #27

Why stop at the slow lane? There is nothing preventing ISP gatekeepers from wholeheartedly denying access. Slowness is just the beginning -- the end-goal is making the internet into multiple competing walled gardens where users are treated as silos that require permission to access. The global reach of the internet is at risk here. Imagine if Netflix wasn't accessible to Comcast users from the beginning because they…

We see this already with blackout outs in cable TV for various sports games ect. In fact, it took 4 months to resolve a dispute between DirecTV and the Weather Channel [0], which affected 20 Million people. There was some outrage, but not enough to for DirecTV to relent. Instead, the content provider was forced to change [1]. There are lessons to be learned here for other content providers, like Netflix. My worry is…

You have the sports blackout backwards. The content producer has demanded the blackout, not the gatekeeper, which would be happy to have the viewers.

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#62

Post by jonlucc »

shubb wrote: post #36

Can anyone think of any advantages to a non-neutral internet? I can think of a few - Netflix and Skype would work better. Most likely, we'd be able to pay for priority traffic, just like we pay for a large AWS instance. Non-priority traffic might be cheaper than current bandwidth. It would be crazy to suggest all sites be forced to use the same size AWS instance... Some types of traffic are bandwidth sensitive, like…

The problem is that most places don't have choices. I have only one option (ATT) for ISP and when I move in a couple months, I will have 2 choices (Comcast and ATT).

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#63

Post by Killah911 »

Disclosure: I'm a Feld fanboy. I think it's a brilliant idea. However, to actually coordinate it would take some doing. Blackouts are relatively easy technically. Slowdowns, not so much, given that most companies that give a crap work diligently to improve the user experience and speed things up.

The financial impact could potentially be huge (as I'm sure blackout was as well). But what's even tougher about this idea is getting companies like Google and Netflix in on the "simulation". They're most likely not going to be on the slow lane. Now let's say some we get a whole bunch of startups who would get penalized by the slow lane to do this for a day. Would it make as much of a difference to the masses? The initial effects will be subtle, but the long term impact on economic activity and startups in general could be devastating.

That being said... if this movement is to take hold we'll need some web server plugins and some JS magic to help it happen at a massive scale. Maybe some of my fellow geeks at the bigCo's can convince them to join in for a day too, for the sake of all of us.

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#64

Post by exelius »

I don't know that this is the solution (or even that there's a problem). I know my opinion isn't very popular on HN on this issue; but I continue to share it because I feel it's important that people understand the view from the other side of the fence. I expect to get downvoted because people disagree with me, but then magical internet points never really mattered much to me.

I think all this talk of the "slow lane" is a bit tinfoil-hat. Companies like Comcast have no interest in slowing down web site traffic; in fact they do a lot of QoS to make web browsing faster and more responsive. This type of traffic (DNS, HTTP requests, online gaming, etc.) tends to get put in a high-priority QoS class: the data transmitted is often small and it greatly improves the user's experience. ISPs have a huge incentive to make this type of traffic as responsive as possible; and given the low bandwidth requirements, this should definitely be possible. It makes their service "feel" faster to the customer and it's the right thing to do for the customer.

Video streaming services are another story. They don't need to be responsive because they pre-cache a lot of data; in fact the right thing to do from a technical perspective is QoS them into the basement. Video can handle this; it's high bandwidth and low latency. The thing is, streaming video accounts for about 80% of peak Internet traffic. A small percentage of users (~30%) are starting to overload the ISP's last-mile networks with video traffic.

The types of high-bandwidth scenarios that the ISPs will be pushing the "fast lane" on are going to be almost exclusively video streaming services. Video streamers have had to pay CDNs for years anyway if they wanted their videos to stream quickly. The idea is that because these services have such a disproportionate effect on bandwidth usage, they need to contribute economically to avoid a tragedy of the commons [1] situation. Your average website or app that's not pulling 1.5+ mbit/s over an extended period of time is likely going to be fast regardless because it's in the ISPs best interests to make it that way.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#65

Post by solnyshok »

two can play this game. Netflix could serve B&W versions of movies to the clients of non-neutral providers. The official line could be something along "this movie have been optimized for the low bandwith connections by removing colors and stereo sound; contact your congressmen"

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#66

Post by SoftwareMaven »

josephlord wrote: post #52
err4nt wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how to say it without being blunt, but I mean no offense, I'm just curious. I've heard of this mythical type of user (no-JS) but never heard their side of the coin before. I dislike ad tracking, information culling, and I think that JavaScript underpins and makes possible many of the things I dislike about the modern web. We agree on that I'm sure. But so does a web browser. So does the operating system…

Edited to add summary Summary I generally browse the web to read things. I want a simple document reading environment with limited power over my computer and minimisation of who is informed of my activities particularly as they cross between different sites. Javascript is not needed and is in fact detrimental to these aims in the majority of cases. -- I use NoScript so in many cases I enable scripts but in others I d…

This was my reason for running NoScript. Then I found Ghostery.

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#67

Post by a_c_s »

exelius wrote: post #64

I don't know that this is the solution (or even that there's a problem). I know my opinion isn't very popular on HN on this issue; but I continue to share it because I feel it's important that people understand the view from the other side of the fence. I expect to get downvoted because people disagree with me, but then magical internet points never really mattered much to me. I think all this talk of the "slow lane"…

As it is Netflix pays for bandwidth and the end user pays for bandwidth.

Why should Netflix pay disproportionately more for its bandwidth than a non-video streaming service?

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#68

Post by coldcode »

shubb wrote: post #36

Can anyone think of any advantages to a non-neutral internet? I can think of a few - Netflix and Skype would work better. Most likely, we'd be able to pay for priority traffic, just like we pay for a large AWS instance. Non-priority traffic might be cheaper than current bandwidth. It would be crazy to suggest all sites be forced to use the same size AWS instance... Some types of traffic are bandwidth sensitive, like…

You forget that the customer would be forced to choose what sites they could access as pay per site. The ISPs (generally a future Comcast monopoly) want to charge both ends to connect. You want Facebook at all - pay $5 per month. Facebook, pay us $1 per customer. You want some random blog, sorry they didn't pay us. Or maybe they will connect you at such a low rate as the site is unusable. The end result is that only huge wealthy companies can be accessed. Everyone else will be so backwater they may as well use smoke signals. The effect of monopoly (at least in the US) will make it impossible for their to be an alternative. I have two choices, AT&T and TWC. Both will do this sort of thing if they can. Then what do I do?

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#69

Post by wmf »

exelius wrote: post #64

I don't know that this is the solution (or even that there's a problem). I know my opinion isn't very popular on HN on this issue; but I continue to share it because I feel it's important that people understand the view from the other side of the fence. I expect to get downvoted because people disagree with me, but then magical internet points never really mattered much to me. I think all this talk of the "slow lane"…

QoS mostly decides which packets get dropped, but ISPs shouldn't be dropping any significant fraction of packets.

(I was tempted to downvote you for your persecution complex, but that would only validate it so I'm torn.)

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#70

Post by revelation »

ihsw wrote: post #27

Why stop at the slow lane? There is nothing preventing ISP gatekeepers from wholeheartedly denying access. Slowness is just the beginning -- the end-goal is making the internet into multiple competing walled gardens where users are treated as silos that require permission to access. The global reach of the internet is at risk here. Imagine if Netflix wasn't accessible to Comcast users from the beginning because they…

All of that has already happened. They banned BitTorrent where and when they can get away with it and they block Skype on particular mobile data contracts.

Note a very foreshadowing EFF press release:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/fcc-rules-against-comc...

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